Decentralisation: who really benefits?
In recent years, there has been a broad agreement that decentralisation is an important element of achieving democracy at local level. It has also been seen as a key to strengthening the delivery of basic services, many of which have proved too cumbersome and expensive for central governments to carry out efficiently. However, in many countries in Africa, service delivery is rarely the main driving force for decentralisation and this is one reason why improvements in service delivery have taken place more slowly than hoped.
In addition, there is little evidence to show that decentralisation is pro-poor despite the importance that poor people themselves attach to local governance. "The poor have useful things to say but, unfortunately, rarely is anyone listening," says David Watson, an independent consultant for the UK Department for International Development (DFID).
Undoubtedly, there are benefits to decentralisation. Local governments should be more efficient in allocating resources; able to provide local communities with better, more appropriate, information; and to be more responsive to local needs. In addition, there should be tighter accountability and potential to generate local revenue. However, this is decentralisation at its best and, unfortunately the best is rarely seen. In practice, local management systems often have insufficient resources as central governments continue to retain much of their power and discretion over available funds. Consequently, local priorities are not met because local governments are unable to be effective in their role. Corruption is also a serious problem and too often local elites, the people regularly elected onto local councils, allocate resources to largely benefit themselves and those closest to them.
With the risks too often outweighing the benefits, is decentralisation really the way to go? David Watson believes that it is, that centralised approaches cannot continue and that, if the benefits are to be realised, then local governments have to be made to be more responsive to local needs. "The process is long, problematic and uncertain," he says. "But I am cautiously optimistic that if we think ten years instead of five, significant improvements can take place although it will take considerable political will, most particularly at the centre, to say that's the way we've got to go."
Finding a pathway out of poverty
Uganda, as David Watson found in his study, is perhaps an exception among countries in Africa struggling with decentralisation in that it has adopted an approach which is targeted at service improvement. Because Uganda's policy has been driven by the need to improve local services, measures have been taken to build capacity at local level and to improve the flow of funds from the centre. However, despite these measures evidence from a study, conducted by the Overseas Development Group of the University of East Anglia in Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Uganda, suggests that the poor are still disadvantaged by the decentralisation process.
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| Credit: Overseas Development Group, UEA |
For many rural people, agricultural activities alone are not sufficient to sustain a family throughout the year. "If people have less than one hectare of land and they don't own big livestock like cattle or goats then these two things alone will mean that these people are seriously poor," says Professor Frank Ellis, leader of the DFID livelihoods 'LADDER' project at UEA. Other means of generating income must be found. However as the team discovered, finding a pathway out of poverty means navigating round the hurdles of decentralisation and this is not an option that the poor are always willing or able to take. For instance, diversification of activities often requires investments to be made in buying more land, livestock, or perhaps equipment for non-agricultural activities. To do this, cash has to be generated. And yet, it is all too common that as fast as the farmer is trying to accumulate cash in order to diversify or improve his livelihood, it is being taken off him in the form of locally imposed taxes. Taking livestock or produce to market, for example, may involve multiple taxation to the extent that relative prices are distorted, participation in markets is more limited and investment is discouraged.
In Uganda, it was found that the contribution of locally raised revenue, over which the councils had complete control, to total budgets in three districts was quite small - between 4-10%. Similar findings were revealed in Tanzania. However, in both countries it was found that 90-95% of this money was spent on administration and allowances and only the remainder spent on community development and other local activities. More importantly, local communities were infrequently consulted on their priorities for this inadequate expenditure.
At present, Professor Ellis feels that decentralisation is generally making the 'enabling environment' worse for local populations rather than better. However, he feels optimistic that further identification of the issues surrounding decentralisation will create greater awareness amongst the development community, so that central governments will eventually be forced to build an incentive situation for money collected locally to be used locally, to ultimately help rather than hinder the poor.
